Who we are - Ireland
Scoil Mhuire is a vonontary Catholic secondary school located in Buncrana, county Donegal. Founded in 1933 by the Sisters of Mercy, the school has a long tradition of offeringhigh-quality post-primary education.
The school odders a broad and balanced curriculum at both Junior and Leaving Certificate levels. The school has a wide range of extracurricular activities: sports , arts and music – also emphasis on natural scienses and sustainability topics.
“SOMETHING FISHY IS GOING ON” – IMPACTS OF OVERFISHING IN DONEGAL, IRELAND
This article is based on a workshop among teachers participating in the “Endangered Waters” Erasmus+ project.
Written by: Esa Myyryläinen
At a high-end fish and chips and seafood restaurant in Dublin city centre, the waiter hauls my orders to the table. On the plate is what you ordered and expected: a heap of thick, golden-brown french fries – or chips, as they are called in these parts – anda freshly deep-fried piece of fish. No salad or vegetables, not even mushy peas or a slice of lemon. Today, the menu offered a choice between plaice, haddock, hake, or a house fish burger. The fish on the plate is plaice. It is delicate and tasty; the batter islight and wonderfully crispy. The meat is thin, but full of flavour. Even though the dish is simple, it is cooked with skill and care, and it is satisfying – like comfort food should be. The price? Over 25 euros per dish.
Fish and chips is arguably the national food in many parts of the British Isles, both parts of Ireland included. Today, it is often served at fancy restaurants like the one that cooked me probably the best piece of plaice I’ve ever eaten. However, traditionally, fish and chips was a working man’s food – nutritious with proteins, fat, and carbs to keep one toiling through the day at a factory or harbour. Most importantly, it was cheap. A few small coins were enough to buy you half a day’s calories. One didn’t even have to cook the food: fried fish with potatoes was (and still is) served from stalls or shops called “chippers” – often small and greasy little jointswhere you can grab your portion for takeaway.
The ritual of serving fish at a chipper is always the same: the teller pulls out your choice of fish, covered in thick batter, and submerges it into a dubiously cloudy pool of piping hot vegetable oil. The chunk of fish cooks in the sizzling fat until it is crispy and brown. A few generous scoops of old-fashioned chipper’s chips areshoveled into a bag (old newspapers are no longer used), followed by the fillet offish. On request, the teller adds salt and malt vinegar. Almost everyone agrees to these additives. The amount of salt that now enters the bag is likely to give yourcardiologistshivers. The malt vinegar turns the potatoes mushy, but no one seems to care – it’s how good old-fashioned fish and chips should be.
However, all is not like it used to be. At a chipper on a narrow street off North O’Connell Street, the day after my first Irish fish and chips at the fancy restaurant, I have a few words with the local customers who have assembled for their after-pub nutrition. Like many Irish, they are always eager for a chat with a stranger. I tell them how much I paid for the wonderful slice of plaice I had the day before.
“That’s mental,” a middle-aged man murmurs. “Why did you even go there?”
“The prices even in this place are not what they used to be. The fish is getting dearer at places like this, and this truly is not a snob place,” he concludes.
And why is that so?
”Because the fish is gone, fished off or somethin’”
The fish here truly is considerably cheaper. But it is not cheap. I choose a piece of fresh cod, and the price is a bit over ten euros. The white fleshed flaky cod used to be the favourite choice of fish and chips eaters in Britain and Ireland because of its thickness and low price, but one doesn’t necessarily get it regularly anymore. The batter here is not as crispy as the day before (maybe because of the hefty amount of malt vinegar), but the dish is otherwise mouth-watering. The cod is chunky, two fingers thick; vinegar gives it perfect tanginess and cuts lovely through the fatty batter. On the menu, one can choose smoked cod too, I notice.
“Where is the cod from?” I ask the teller.
“I don’t know... Norway, or maybe Iceland,” he replies.
“Not from Ireland?” I wonder.
“Well, we don’t have cod around Ireland anymore... Or we do, but it’s way too small and rare
and thin for chunkier bits.”
“Well, what do you fish in Irish waters?” I ask.
“Maybe whiting and plaice, but I’m not sure if we have too much fish in our water
anymore,” the young teller maybe in his teens replies and looks unsure...
A day after, we arrive in County Donegal, Ulster, on a fine spring day. (“We” referred in this article henceforward, are teachers from Finland, Turkey, and Germany. We are participating in an Erasmus+ programme called “Endangered Waters.”) The focus here in the northernmost part of Ireland is the Irish overfishing industry and its impacts. The ocean is beautiful and its seems to be endless – and it almost is. If you sail from here to the north, you’ll end up at the North Pole. The westward route would take you to the shores of Newfoundland, Canada. The sea smells fresh and briny with happy notes of seaweed. It smells healthy. But like the customers at a plain Dublin chipper could tell, all is not well under the main.
The beautiful seas we see around Donegal, which have sustained Donegal’s coastal communities for generations, are under mounting pressure. From the fishing town of Killybegs to the remote islands of the northwest, the effects of overfishing, policy disputes, and ecological stressors are now threatening both marine life and livelihoods – affecting even the greasy chipper stalls in the back streets of Dublin. Once teeming with herring, mackerel, salmon, haddock, and even cod, Irish waters – particularly off the Donegal coast – are now facing declining fish stocks, rising international competition, and what many local fisheries call an “unfair” regulatory burden. Ireland’s overfishing problem has been well documented. For years, environmental watchdogs have warned that something “fishy is going on.” Many species are being caught at levels above scientific advice. Donegal, a county with a deep maritime tradition, finds itself at the epicentre of this crisis. Home to Ireland’s largest fishing port in Killybegs, Donegal’s economy is uniquely exposed to problems in fish stocks and quota changes.While the national conversation has focused on sustainability, fishers on the ground tell a different story – one of shrinking quotas, lost income, and communities struggling to stay afloat. On a bigger picture, it is also a story of away of life vanishing in just a few decades.
To get to the root of the issue in Donegal, our host Feargal Dogherty from Wild Atlantic Learnining Co. takes us to visit one of the fishermen’s co-operatives at a Donegal fishing harbour. These co-ops are community-based organisations that support local fishers by providing shared services such as fuel, gear supplies, boat maintenance, cold storage, and fish marketing. They play a vital role in sustaining the local fishing economy by helping small-scale fishers remain competitive, promoting sustainable practices, and giving members a collective voice in policy discussions and quota negotiations. They also invest strongly in local infrastructure.
We meet the head of the co-operative at the massive fish-intake hall by the piers. He takes us for a tour around the premises. All around us, a plethora of high-quality fish are packed into boxes filled with crushed ice. The species and boxes full of fish are plentiful: plaice, haddock and whiting are being cooled and shipped for customers all around Europe. Even some locally caught cod are packed, though their size might not satisfy the customers at thechippers around O’Connell Street. After a tour that would raise the appetite of any fish-lover, the most important question must be asked: Are the fish disappearing from the waters of Donegal because of Irish overfishing? According to the spokesperson, they are not. Fish stocks could still be vital, healthy, and ready to catch around Donegal. So, what is the issue?
“It’s the unequal catch quotas that allow foreigners to trawl our waters,” he says.
According to him, especially Norwegian trawlers are harvesting fish such as blue whiting off the Irish coast, while the Irish are limited to a fraction of the catch. The core issue lies in fishing agreements within the EU, which are considered unfair from the Irish perspective. The Norwegians also use large trawlers, while most Irish fishers go out with small fishing vessels. At the same time, Irish fishermen do not have equal rights of fish in Norwegian waters. The recent Berxit has also raised probblems, even thought the cross border co-operation in sustainability matters is mostly functional according to the Donegal county officials.
Fish is processed and packed at a fishing co-op, Donegal
It is true that international agreements seem quite unfair from the Irish point of view.The reason lies in complex diplomacy and international treaties, whose benefits don’t seem to trickle down to the common Irish fisherman.
On an off-loading pier, we meet one of them – a man in his late 30’s called Séan. He is willing to share his views on the issue. Séan is a fisherman - as was his father before him. Like many fishermen in Donegal, he owns a small business: he goes out to sea with a small skiff (compared to the large ocean-going trawlers the Norwegians use, or some of the larger vessels anchored nearby), and his intake and quota are relatively small. He fishes for many species according to the season, but some fishing traditions are long gone.
“We used to fish salmon here in Donegal with gillnets in the old days, and it was good money – but that’s all in the past now. No one fishes salmon here anymore.” He says.
All Atlantic salmon stocks have dramatically plummeted across the northern hemisphere, and the Irish government has issued strict bans on commercial salmon fishing. Only a small number of licensed draft net and snap net fisheries still operate in County Donegal, but Séan is not one of these operators.
A talk with Séan at the pier
We asked Séan the same question we did at the co-op a few steps away just moments earlier:
Are the fish disappearing from around Donegal? According to Séan, they are. His quotas are getting smaller and smaller, and the reason is dwindling fish stocks.
“Same thing that happened with salmon is happening with other fish,” he says.
The reason? It could be the cursed Norwegians, it could be climate change. He doesn’t really know. Maybe scientist do. Whatever it is, Séan is experiencing the effects in his livelihood and way of life.
Séan’s boat is a traditional small coastal fishing vessel
The diminishing quotas have forced Séan, like many of his peers, to change target
species. As we peeked on Séan’s boat we saw – instead of fish – plastic nets full of live shellfish.
“That’s brown crab,” Séan explained.
We wondered if it’s tasty.
“It’s not for food. They use it for cosmetics in France – face cream or something – to make ladies beautiful,” Séan laughed.
He explained that as a fisherman, he’d rather go out for haddock or whiting – or salmon, if it was allowed – but the present situation forces local small-scale fishers to catch crabs, when the quota of other catch is fullfilled.
“Fifty years ago, everyone around here went to sea for fish. We fishermen are a dying breed,” he says.
Séan is a family man, and we ask if he wishes his son to take up his profession like
he did before, from his father. “No. There’s no future in this,” he notes somberly. “There won’t be any fishing villages here anymore in 30 years,” he complains.
Declining stocks have a dramatic and deep impact on rural communities in Donegal. As families abandon the traditional way of life, the whole community in Donegal changes. The fishing restrictions have been linked to population loss, business closures – and even fever lifeboat volutnteers on Donegal coas, as we were told at the Donegal Maritime Museum. Communities lose not just people, but tradition – including boat skills, language and maritime knowledge, as younger generations are forced to find other incomes and lifestyles. The loss of culture is something that gives perhaps most grievance, not only to Séan, but the whole community in Donegal. It is not unlike the buffalo for an native american on the western plains, which was in the core of their life. As the plentiful natural resource and the core of their culture was annihilated by humans, whole lifestyles disappeared not to ever to return.
Catch of the day – brown crab
We still had a wonderful portion of Fish and chips in Donegal. It was served from a small mobile stall at a remote village across the loch from Buncrana, whereto our host brought by a boat. No cod was on the menu, but the slice of plaice (that was cheap) tasted perhaps even better than the one I had in fancy Dublin fish restaurant. While digging into our treats, we inevitably had ruminate on the difficult topic of state of fisheries in Donegal and the state of maritime ecosystems.
We felt that the situation we encountered in Donegal is a microcosm of global struggles: How to balance marine conservation with economic survival How to share access to finite natural resources fairly. How to preserve communities that have relied on the sea for centuries. Whether the tide can be turned here in Donegal remains to be seen. But one thing is clear – the current path seems to be unsustainable. One can not lay all the blame for unfair fishing policies nor a single nation. Something sinister and irreversilbe seems to be taking place. The thick, sour, and fatty fish and chips many love – whether it’s plaice, haddock, or cod – might disappear from Irish plates. And that is only the least of our concerns in a bigger picture. Without decisive action, Donegal’s fishing industry – and the way of life it supports – may become a thing of the past. And most imprtantly, the diversity in the oceans might be gone forever. We felt that, as teachers and educators, we play a pivotal role by equiping students with the knowledge, values and critical thinking skills needes to understand enviromental issues and take responsible action for a more sustainable future.
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Student voices - Ireland
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Who we are - Türkiye
Borsa İstanbul 24 Kasım Anadolu Lisesi is located in the dynamic city of Adana. The school has aproximately 905 students enrolled.
The school emphasizes not only academic success but also the developement of social, cultural, sporting and artistic skills. It aims to prepare students for highre education with self-confidence, while being tolerant of human diverity and nature.
The school has participated on various ERASMUS+ programmes in the past.
Mobility - Türkiye
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Who we are - Finland
Mainingin koulu is a Finnish comprehensive school (grades 1-9) located in Kivenlahti, Espoo. With about 660-670 students and a dedicated staff incuding teachers and assistants, it offers a diverse and inclusive learning environment. The school is known for its emphasis on music and dance expression.
Core values include student-centered learning, cooperation, equality, and fostering well-being and confidence in all pupils.
A newcomer in ERASMUS+ programme, Mainingin koulu serves as a coorinating school for the ENDANGERED WATERS project, and is dedicated and eager in continiuing in international cooperation in following years.
Mobility - Finland
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Who we are - Germany
Willy - Brandt Gesamtschule is a progressive comprehensive school located in Bochum., Germany. Founded in 1988, it serves around 1300 – 1400 students from grades 5 trough 13.
WBG places strong emphasis on inclusive education and broad student developement. I holds several regocnitions such as ”MINT-friendly school”, ”School without racism – school with courage” and has been awarded for its strong career guidance programs
WBG is now an accredited ERASMUS+ school.
Mobility - Germany
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Partnership for this project is founded and funded under ERASMUS+ programme.and it is funded by the European Comission. ERASMUS+ is the European Unions flagship programme for education, training, youth and sport.Launched in 1987, it supports opportunities for students, trainees, staff and volonteers to study, train and gain experience abroad.
The programme aims to promote cross-cultural exhange, enhance skills and strengthen cooperation between insituitions across Europe and beyond.
The partnership formed for ENDANGERED WATERS is a foundation for new projects in the future. And we are dedicated in continuing with ties formed during this project. We lso welcome new partners to map depicted on this website!